


Hurt You Back

by tallerthanaffliction



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: AND MORE FUCKED UP THAN EVER, Cheating, F/M, HI EVERYONE IM BACK, QoN spoilers, Queen of nothing spoilers, literally don't read this unless you've read qon, post-qon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:13:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21567436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tallerthanaffliction/pseuds/tallerthanaffliction
Summary: It seemed like the worst was over for Jude and Cardan – but what could ever be worse for them than each other? (Alternate summary - "If you hurt me, I wouldn't cry. I would hurt you back.") (Alternate alternate summary - "What happens when you listen to Thinking Of You by Katy Perry on repeat for too long? This fanfiction!")
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Comments: 19
Kudos: 107





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Y'ALL... SORRY ABOUT THIS

The warmth of fragile peace which existed between Jude Duarte and Cardan Greenbriar in the weeks after their mortal world wedding party lasted just that — weeks. Those weeks were full of brushed hands, whispered words, and sharing the same bed night after night. They were full of sex. Those weeks were also full of unspoken discomforts, unacknowledged hardships that came from everything changing and oh-so quickly. From two people with little reason to trust anyone trying to trust each other, a trust stemming from love rather than growing as love’s foundation.

There was happiness for a week, semi-happiness for another, and something like terror for the week after that, the week of “I love you” laced with fear. Then the fighting began.

“Will you give me space?” was one snapped sentence.

“Do you think you can control me?” was another.

At first they made up, and those were the moments when they truly believed the tenuous grasp they had on each other would hold. Those were moments of gentleness and affection, moments they would both try to bring to mind during the fights that followed.

And fights certainly followed.

One problem, one problem of many, one problem of hundreds or thousands, was that Cardan trusted Jude — to an extent, Cardan trusted Jude — and Jude did not trust Cardan. Cardan did not trust Jude never to hurt him, even deliberately, even cruelly, but he trusted her to be Jude, and to be solid, and that was what he meant when he said, “I trust you.”

Jude trusted Cardan very little.

Jude did not even trust herself to be Jude, and to be solid.

And Jude didn’t know that Cardan’s fragile trust wouldn’t be enough until it was already too late.

—

There was no clear moment when true trouble began. After all, there had always been trouble for and between Jude and Cardan, so what was a little more?

The trouble that broke something within them might have begun when Jude told Cardan she didn’t trust him, or when he replied, “I would never have believed otherwise.”

It might have begun when Cardan started leaving the throne room right as Jude arrived, whispered excuses and silent apologies following, a feeling of “I wish I could stay but I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

It had certainly started by the time they had the fight that burned through all they had worked for, the work of years and pain and hurt and, ultimately, love.

This fight began with an attempt at peace.

“Cardan,” Jude said. “Things have been difficult lately, I know, but you need not leave the room when I arrive.”

Jude, in her way, believed this would help. Jude’s way was not to bring peace, but chaos. Jude had blood on her hands and no idea how to clean them.

“Do I not?” asked Cardan in response, cruelty lighting his features in a way it more and more often did. “Lately your presence has not been especially comforting.”

Jude’s anger spiked.

“I am not here for your comfort,” she said, to mask her hurt. “And you have never been a comfort to me,” she said, to mask her fear.

Cardan was silent for a moment, trying to temper his cruel impulses with the love he knew was there.

“I never wanted this.”

Jude heard, “I never wanted you,” and she said, “and yet it was always our fate.”

Cardan, having been raised with a cruel and inescapable “fate” hanging over his head, resented the word.

“Do you see why I leave the room when you arrive? Why would I want to go through this? Is it not better to be alone?”

“When you married me, that was the choice you made. When you told me you loved me you weren’t telling me you wanted to be alone.”

“Perhaps I made a mistake,” Cardan said, knowing as he said it that he should not have.

“Perhaps we both did,” said Jude, not even thinking of whether she should have said it.

The fight was not one of screaming, which perhaps would have made things worse, but likely would have made them better.

The fight was not vicious with “I hate you” and “I wish I could escape you,” but it was vicious all the same.

The fight was soft and truthful and all the more painful for it.

—

Cardan was angry. That was why he thought he did it.

Cardan was afraid. That was why he actually did it.

It was hours later, hours of silent avoidance, hours of fear and pain and longing and wishing for taken-back words on both sides.

Cardan was in the throne room when the faerie approached him.

“Forgive me, my King,” she said, bowing her head. “This may appear impudent. There have been rumors… there have been rumors that perhaps you are in need of a consort.”

Cardan could tell that her nervousness was faked, that she was acting for his benefit, and he did not care.

Cardan was in no need of a consort, and yet he found himself with the faerie — her name was Anlia — at his side, then in his lap, then taking him by the hand and pulling him from the throne.  
Cardan felt daring in a way he had not in some time. He felt reckless and free.

He felt horrid.

And that was before Jude walked in.

When Jude walked in, Cardan saw her instantly, his eyes as drawn to her human figure as they always had been. He felt love and pain and longing, and in the moment that her eyes rested on him and him alone, he thought he saw those feelings mirrored in them.

Then she noticed his hand joined with Anlia’s hand and all was lost. Then she looked at him with nothing but hatred, nothing but the pure betrayal of someone who realizes how far the game will go. Nothing but desire, not desire for Cardan but desire for hurting Cardan.

Cardan saw this, and he was empty, and he led Anlia from the throne room.

—

Jude had a decision to make. She could trust Cardan, but that was out of the question, and she was nearly certain it would be a waste of trust, anyway. There were two real options — leave Cardan to his business with the faerie, presumably the first random faerie he found after their fight, or catch him in the act.

Jude had never been one to turn her back and decide not to know.

So it was that she walked down the halls, and she felt the tension in her body, the burning anxiety and fear and near-panic, grow and grow and grow as she walked. She opened the door to Cardan’s chambers, and she heard Anlia’s laughter and barely processed it, having come too far to accept this as proof and turn back now. Jude walked into Cardan’s chambers, and she saw him naked, and Anlia naked and on her knees in front of him, on her knees like Jude herself had once been, and she turned and walked from the room, from the chambers, from the palace.

She felt her entire body folding into the pit in the bottom of her stomach, a bottomless hole she would never escape. Then she felt nothing. Then she felt homesick for a while, homesick for Madoc’s estate and a place she could call home that didn’t cause her quite this much pain. Then she remembered Madoc stabbing her and the pain she carried everywhere.

Then she wanted Cardan. It was a vicious cycle that ended when Jude found her way to the shore and stared into the water, bile rising in her throat as she remembered her time in the undersea. The horrors that had occurred there, and the horrors that were occurring here. Horror seemed to be Jude’s fate, she thought, and perhaps it was horror she deserved.

Then a memory, unbidden, came to Jude, a memory of a time when Locke had been alive, and when she had told him, even thinking she could one day love him, that if he hurt her, she wouldn’t cry. She would hurt him back.

Cardan had hurt her.

But she wouldn’t cry.

She would hurt him back.


	2. Chapter 2

Jude did not return to the palace until the next evening. When she did, she went immediately to her chambers. Cardan was there, and he stared at her, but she did not stare back, nor did she cower away. She merely went about her business, and he did not disturb her, knowing well enough to leave her be after what she had witnessed. What he had done.

Jude dressed for the revel, and if she spent a moment longer naked than was entirely necessary, and if she straightened her back to emphasize her breasts, well — her taunting was far less than what Cardan deserved. She wore a dress of silk, more of a slip than the court gowns she usually donned.

She left for the revel.

Cardan arrived an hour after Jude, and by that point she was already lost to wine and dancing with every faerie whose eyes lingered on her a moment too long. Every faerie bold enough to dance with the High Queen.

Cardan sat alone on the dais and watched her, punished himself with the vision of her pleasure in the arms of another. Even as he knew it was what he deserved, his anger grew as he watched. Temptation to return to his cruelty, the cruelty that had provided him with a shield for so long, was abundant in his mind.

Still — when Jude left with a faerie, light-haired and tall and utterly boring, Cardan did not immediately follow. He waited to see if she would change her mind, if she would come back and confront him, hurt him in person, make him regret his mistake even more than he already did. He wished for it as he had never wished for anything but Jude, Jude, Jude.

She did not return.

—

Jude, for her part, was spending every moment miserable. She was miserable as she dressed, miserable as she drank, miserable as she danced, and now, entering her chambers — her shared chambers — with this male faerie whose name she could not remember, she was miserable. She regretted her actions before she even took them.

And when he kissed her? When he kissed her, she felt nauseous.

When he kissed her, she pulled away, mumbled apologies, and kissed him again. She kissed him to torture herself, to torture Cardan. She kissed him, and she was deadened by rage and shame.

When his fingers ventured downward, he raised an eyebrow. She knew she wasn’t aroused, not in the least, not in the slightest. She had no desire to be kissing this faerie, let alone do more.

Jude swallowed hard. She wanted to make herself sleep with him but, as it turned out, he was too decent for that.

“I’ll share your bed, for whatever reason you desire that I do, but I will not force something that you do not want.”

Jude felt lightheaded with relief and dizzy with shame.

“Please stay,” she murmured.

He stayed, and she did not touch him all night. The thought of his skin made her ill. The thought of sharing a bed with anyone who wasn’t Cardan made her ill. The thought of what she had seen made her ill.

She was sick, and things were only getting worse.

—

When Jude awoke the next evening, she slipped from bed and left the sleeping chambers, only to find Cardan lying on the couch outside the bedroom.

They stared again, but this time, he spoke.

“Did he satisfy you?” he asked in a voice laced with cruelty.

Jude shuddered. She hated herself. She was sick with it.

“I am more satisfied than I have ever been,” she lied, leaving the sentence up to interpretation.

Cardan’s eyes flashed. He stood. He stormed into the bed chambers.

“Get out,” she heard him say, the voice of a king, decided and hard. “Now.”

Unnamed Faerie stumbled half-dressed from the chambers. “I’m sorry, My Lord, I—“

“There will be consequences if you do not exit immediately.”

“Cardan!” Jude exclaimed, but the look he gave her made her shrink into herself, ashamed, ashamed, ashamed.

When he reached the exit, clutching his clothing to his body, the faerie said, “we did nothing more than kiss, I swear it,” before hastily departing.

Jude whirled on Cardan.

“You can’t punish him! I could simply contradict you and we’d be at a standstill, and then what would our subjects think of us?”

“You did nothing?” Cardan replied, ignoring Jude’s question entirely. “You put me through that and did _nothing_ with him?”

Jude’s shame rose, but with it rose her anger.

“Oh, I’m sorry, High King,” she said with as much venom as she could muster. “Did I _hurt_ you? Did I make you jealous? I can’t imagine what could ever provoke such behavior in me. In fact—“  
“So this is your strategy? Vengeance? There are other ways to hurt me, why not try them all?”

Jude’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps I will.”

“We will destroy each other, Jude,” Cardan said with sudden quietness. “There will be nothing left.”

Jude’s voice only rose. “There is nothing left, Cardan. You saw to that.”

“Then what comes next? We watch our kingdom burn in our wake?”

“I would never jeopardize our kingdom over my hatred of you. That, it would seem, is your job.”

Cardan visibly flinched at the word hatred, but he was too angry now to stop.

“This is not worth a kingdom? The love we shared?”

“You told me once,” Jude said, “that you didn’t play games with love. That you weren’t like Locke. But you are exactly, every bit, the same.”

Cardan was silent for a long moment before taking a step, two steps, toward her. They were inches apart.

“I do not play games,” he said, voice dangerously low.

“And yet,” Jude said, “we are locked in one now.”

“You hate me,” he said, a statement of fact, a believed truth.

Jude smiled.

Cardan kissed her.

The kiss was all biting and tugging and rage. It was bleeding lips and tongues. It was Jude’s back against the wall, then on the bed, because if nothing else, at least they both knew that the floor was still sacred.

When he entered her, she cried out as though he had hurt her. He hadn’t, but he had.

When she came, she felt the knot in her throat so thick she couldn’t breathe.

When they finished, Jude turned away to one side, and Cardan to the other.

He pretended he didn’t hear her crying.


	3. Chapter 3

Cardan didn’t know why he was doing this, nor why he could not bring himself to stop.

It, as with most things, as with his life before Jude, very likely had everything to do with fear and nothing to do with real desire.

He wanted to rage, but he knew it was fear. He wanted to throw his glass (refilled, refilled, refilled) against the wall and shatter it and watch his fear rain down with the shards. He wanted not to feel.

More than anything, he wanted to trust, but how can anyone learn something they’ve never known? It would be learning to see a color that doesn’t exist. It would be learning a language without ever having heard it, seen it, experienced it. With no one to teach you. That’s what learning to trust would be.

Cardan thought that maybe faeries did love differently, as Locke always said. 

That maybe their love was fragile, easily reversed, broken and twisted into something horrific.

He knew he was making excuses, because his love for Jude was as pure as it ever had been, as pure as the moment he told her he loved her. The only changes were in trust, and in fear. 

The distrust, though, was also what had driven him to the couch while she had done… “nothing,” with the male faerie. The distrust provoked him to wait, to make sure she was safe, to play at the ritual of caring for her even as he could not bring himself to show it in his actions, in his words. He distrusted faeries. 

He distrusted everyone, most of all himself.

He didn’t know why he was doing this.

He didn’t know how to bring himself to stop.

—

Jude woke to pain so acute she lost sight of whether it was within her or without. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think.

Cardan, of course, was gone.

For several minutes, Jude allowed herself the rare, sick pleasure of simply feeling. She felt and felt until she could bear it no more, and then she rose. She felt as though her life was a haze of pain. She walked to the bathing chambers.

The bruises on her body barely registered for a moment as she looked at her reflection. The first thing she felt about them was a thrill at the thought that their equals lived now on Cardan’s body. The second thing she felt was shame.

When she bathed, it was methodical, robotic. She felt nothing. She thought nothing. She knew nothing.

Finished bathing, Jude rose once more, thinking she had a hold on herself, that she could function as the High Queen, that she could harness her own power and be who she was meant to be despite the unraveling of her life.

She was wrong.

Tears came without warning, and Jude fell back into the bath with a sob, curled up in the water. For a moment, she wished to drown, and for another, she wished to drown him. Above all, she knew, she wished for them to drown together.

Maybe that was exactly what they were doing.

And the worst part, the part that really, truly did Jude in, was the love. The love that lasted. The love that had grown as a sickness inside her and even now refused to fade.

Jude loved Cardan.

It, she thought, was always meant to be her demise.

—

Cardan returned just in time to hear Jude crying.

It broke him.

It broke him, but not completely enough to make him change.

He forced himself to listen outside the door, to hear her crying. To hear what he had done to her.

He hated himself like never before, but a part of him, a cruel, cruel part of him wanted her to hurt like this. He wanted her to hurt because she loved him. He wanted her to learn to hate him as he had learned to hate himself.

She shouldn’t have chosen him.

He would never have chosen himself.

He stopped listening.

—

This was not the time, Jude thought, for a moment of weakness.

Yet moments of weakness are not chosen — they appear when they like and leave you with nothing.

This was a moment of weakness for Jude.

When she left the bathroom, Cardan was gone. She knew she had heard him outside. For once, she had cried harder for the knowledge he was there. And now he was gone, and there was only one place she could think of that he would be.

In the arms of someone else.

Unlike Cardan, Jude couldn’t predict where he might be, couldn’t follow him and sleep on the couch outside his door. Couldn’t, or wouldn’t, threaten his partner of choice the next morning. So instead, Jude crawled into bed, exhausted from crying.

Creatures of habit in so many ways, Cardan and Jude had separate sides of the bed, which they religiously kept as their own. However, Jude was having a moment of weakness, and so she crawled into Cardan’s side of the bed, laid her head down on Cardan’s pillow, then moved it so she could wrap around it.

She smelled him.

She hated him.

She loved him.

She fell asleep.

—

When Cardan returned once more, it was from doing exactly what Jude had known he was doing. He felt dirty, disgusting. He felt worse than when he had left, but also better. Better for the knowledge that everything he did surely pushed Jude farther out of love with him.

Yet Cardan, too, was capable of a moment of weakness.

When he saw her, wrapped around his pillow, tears streaking her face, he felt agony in a way he had never experienced it. He wished he could stop loving her. He felt that love eating him from the inside out.

Instead of leaving, drowning the pain in yet another distraction, he approached the bed. Instead of hurting Jude, he crawled into bed behind her. Instead of being the prince-turned-king everyone expected him to be, he wrapped his arms around her, held her tightly to him.

He couldn’t fix this, but he couldn’t break it either.

He couldn’t love her and he could never, never leave her.

Cardan Greenbriar was stuck.

—

Jude woke with Cardan’s arms around her.

She loved him.

He smelled of sex and alcohol. They both pretended to be sleeping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SORRY I VANISHED FOR SO LONG!!! I won't bore you with the details but shit got crazy. Anyway, now that I can't leave my apartment I'm writing again! Sorry about this chapter.


End file.
